the a. back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour millions of americans have turned to fast food service jobs in hopes of providing for their families but making just over minimum wage makes that easier said than done are fast food workers in new york city trying to promote change and better wages in the fast food industry and rupert murdoch the international media mogul and father of fox news isn't happy with the size of his already massive empire and now he wants a complete global media monopoly a kind of devastating effects that

a possible murdoch media monopoly on the american political system will tell you it's nice to take. your take my take live the phone lines are now open so if you want to share an opinion make a comment ask a question live on the air give us a call or two or two nine zero four twenty one thirty four now in time for the first call or the night would be market canada mark thanks for calling in what's on your minds and i. think that particularly cool i really appreciate your program but i wish it was more than a visible to lots of people that's my only complaint that made her. go with the powerful media who are only where we're going we're doing our best mark what is that when you call them well i guess you know it gets a little bit thank you very much fred in new york city fred thank you for calling what's on your mind. and informative program as usual. if

people don't think that. there's global warming or climate change it's really too bad that you can't talk to polar bears they can usually swim sixty miles off shore that are now it's rounding. yeah it is you know it is the big media in this country is way overboard with everything it's such a pleasure to see a show like yours like you just had that congressman grayson on he's telling us you know. you got to get ready for people to think you want a job that's all i'm number one problem here in this country i think is that too many people expect you know someone else to vote is that it's. i when i ran for the union branch president one time and it was a it was a. chance type of being because too many people apathetic and they didn't vote and the opposing party was so full of cronies the next is this is a model of what the last system is like i mean if you take on what you want as

politics out of. the regulations and confusing stuff it's good to find something that you can research and and look at facts in the i think you guys do a great job fred appreciate the call thank you very much jim in philly hey jim what's on your mind. really saying the one percenters pay thirty four percent of our taxes if you want to balance budget years and eisenhower your great idea. are now paying thirty four percent of our taxes they're paying any pain that percentage of our federal income taxes but that's only one of the many doing of many taxes that we all pay as a percentage of income the people working at mcdonald's for eight bucks an hour pay more of their income in taxes than mitt romney that's right how do you think we're doing the guys now you with what percentage of the federal taxes are collected from the one percenters because i know people manipulate the numbers in the get their point across i don't know off the top of my head and i do really like them do you

research and come back later show you show your rate by the way thank you yeah i'd be glad to will get the numbers and we'll do a chart and graph and i think thank you jim i appreciate you calling in and raising the question that's something that we have done shows on before you know where where was the. revenue before where is it now and what you know i can tell you the top tax rate during the eisenhower years was ninety one percent and you know right now the top tax rate is thirty five percent and they're talking about taking it up to thirty nine thirty nine point six percent which is where i was in the clinton administration so you know seems like a reasonable thing david in prescott arizona david what's on your mind tonight. about. the co-actor the commercial advertisement loudness mitigation acted to twenty to make them work them out of the commercial. and i think. it's because. if you don't it's kind of toxic because you have the power to do it

and it's off with a hard sell there so with a hard sell big i think that i think the main reason why commercial advertisers are like you know commercial television increases the volume on the commercials by actually is two things i think a it's they're trying to make sure that when you go out to the kitchen to grab a glass of milk or you run into the bathroom you can still hear their message and be they don't actually make it louder what they do is they equalised they compress the they praise the soft parts they they tone down the loud parts and so it's a it's a it's a it's a more solid chunk of sound this is only it's done routinely on radio by the way virtually all the time on television it's only done during the commercial breaks but digitizing with found is that it is overkill and. what bothers me it has been you know nobody talked about it in the headline on december. this year that they all and all the major networks have to conform to that but what bothers me there's been no publicity about it oh yeah david you know i bring that to my attention

because i didn't know all of the you know i can't verify what you're saying but i believe you but i didn't know that i'm going to have to look into that thank you for the tip on that ryan in oswego elin. hey ryan thanks for thanks for watching thanks for calling what's on your mind tonight thanks for taking my call i just want to ask you a quick question how you feel about the regard to and v.a. and drone attacks and what point to the come become american responsibility to start protesting this act when on a large scale well i think you got it from that oh. yeah this is i think it was from the get go you know the our our use of drones the way that we've been doing them these drone attacks in countries that we are not at war with pakistan is our ally and and and when we start killing innocent civilians you know we may take out a few bad guys but they're not a you know we're not at war with that country we should be helping them take out

the bad guys if that's our goal or we should ask for permission to invade their country or maybe if we're going to use drones and i appreciate your perspective and going to use drones you don't ask for their permission but it's this is can you imagine to me just give you a frame for this down in mexico they know the mexican government knows that some of their mexican drug lords are hanging out in the united states and certainly their people are the people who are killing thousands of mexicans and destroying their economy and murdering police chiefs thanks what if they got a drone and there was a mexican drug lord who was living in a house in phoenix arizona to fly the drone over that house and take out the city block kill a bunch of people but hey they killed a mexican drug lord do you think the united states would put up with that. how long is eight a why can't americans get their head around you know this idea that the people in pakistan are a little upset with us about this i think that we all need to be protesting clifton in st louis missouri clifton what's up. i'm like to bring the subject back to

catastrophic climate change i think as americans we should do our support behind any of. them and there's going to climb them and i've got. as the consumers the largest consumers of energy in the world we have the power to change. and so we need to go our support behind. the world i'm only saying about that i'm totally with you ron i appreciate your raising the topic i think the global climate change bill mckibben might happen tony you mentioned bill mckibben bill's been on this program many times in our radio show for years i've known bill for years and he has done such brilliant work on this is web site is three fifty dot org and it's really worth checking out but i think what he's been saying for years at some point we're going to look back and say this was the big issue of our generation of art of our day of our era and i think he's

absolutely right ron in philly iran what's on your mind. let me show you two things one is well companies that were all out of world one were going to country the country yes the world. still depends on the country as. well it depends on the country some some countries say. the saudi arabia different place. how come they were kept in the world well in the gulf of mexico i mean if they. say they expect. you will make. well there are there are capped wells all over the united states not just in the gulf there are there are there are capped wells and caught in the continental united states and i appreciate you calling in pointing this out it's a big deal this is the oil companies basically saying ok this is an asset let's sit on this until the price goes up and in the meantime we'll take the cheaper oil we can get from the middle east and we'll have the american taxpayer pay for the for

the fifth fleet to protect it bring it here and we'll bring that o.l. in and then when that oil gets more expensive then we'll take our domestic with janet in kemah idaho my saying that right gena can mean i can yeah ok everybody mispronounced that so. my question is well i've been listening to warren buffett plan for how to raise taxes on the rich without the. problems of redefining the tax code and what he says is you know anybody making over a hundred thousand night dollars a year should have a minimum tax of thirty percent no matter how many decks and drinking they have to pay thirty percent of everything over a hundred thousand. and if they make two hundred thousand it should be thirty five percent and it would be very easy to enact that whereas it would take months of negotiations to do something about eliminating all the all the loopholes like the

capital gains one. you're spot on jan and i don't know about the threshold numbers on that. you know whether you're right about those sounds reasonable. to care about that either but this seems like something that they could get. a lot faster and easier than trying to negotiate those different i agree and i appreciate you calling and raising the issue oddly enough former republican congressman and now you know t.v. guy joe scarborough wrote an op ed in today's politico dot com about this basically endorsing warren buffett's plan for a minimum tax for for very wealthy people bill in oakmont illinois a bill with. yes tom thanks for taking the call i just want to say you must be white. sox so-called moves into tush

a little because they are mentioning. bill i appreciate your call i. who knows you know thanks a lot for the call the jam and jerry in ontario canada hey jerry what's up. what's on your mind. i just sort of ask you a question the last year in the last four years of your ministration were you present for a couple. and if you look at the results election and he was elected by roughly but he got about four percent but i don't think oh sure and we just have dr we just have ten or fifteen seconds left so what in your opinion if you could. i think he's better than the republicans there's a appreciate your question but there's a lot i'd like him god i'd like him to be a lot more progressive than he is but he's a lot better than that romney would. that's it for your take my take live thanks for all your calls if we didn't get to your calls tonight tryst back next week.

coming up fast food jobs are once thought to be transition jobs for teenagers and college kids but now americans of all ages are relying on them for income there's no time fast food workers are paid a living wage rather than the next to nothing wages they can barely survive off of now. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom foreman welcome to the big picture.

here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that many americans call a dollar. sorry obviously doesn't care about a lot but you sir are a little you know what kind of mind tears a little one he was saying the feature is on the on the ball and the current. computer going to the globe are going to distract us from what you and i should care about because there are profit driven industry that sells us sensationalistic garbage because that breaking news i'm out to martin and we're going to break this that.

as the rest of the news today workers in new york city may have had to pass on their favorite fast food joint for lunch as hundreds of workers of fast food restaurants like mcdonald's and burger king walked out on strike used to be that employees of fast food restaurants were teenagers or kids in college but now working in the fast food industry is the new normal for millions of americans and unfortunately will be the demographics of the fast food industry have changed the pay and conditions of not many fast food employees make just over the minimum wage and find it nearly impossible to support their families with such small salaries so

will today's walkout in the big apple spur some change in the fast food industry and help workers get a living wage joining me now is independent journalist sara jaffe sara welcome back to the program hi tom thanks for having me thanks for joining us what exactly is going on in new york city today what are the demands of the workers it's pretty exciting here in new york city first i mean you're saying these workers are making just over minimum wage most of the ones that i've talked to are literally making minimum wage they're making seven twenty five an hour in the most expensive city to live in the country so literally minimum wage workers they're demanding a raise to fifteen dollars an hour and they want union recognition and this is a was a strike over two hundred workers at over they believe i think two dozen different franchises two different dozen different stores walked out this is mcdonald's burger king k.f.c. taco bell. and domino's pizza all walked out demanding the same thing and they want to form an independent union now are all those people who walked out today going to immediately lose their jobs well let's hope not as i was leaving i actually just

came from the rally at times square at the mcdonald's in times square where elected officials and faith leaders and community members were pledging to walk back in with them to their jobs to. morning so hopefully there will be enough pressure from the community from elected officials and members of the city council members of the state assembly who are keeping an eye out to see what happens what is the fast food workers could be i'm sorry what is the fast food workers committee is that is that a group it's the it's the independent union that they are going to that they want to form and they want the right of recognition and all these different so this fast food franchise so this is not and you know like the commercial food workers union or whatever it's called you know this is not a specific union this trying to organize them this is a spontaneous within with within their own their own workplace this literally came from an organizing effort on a different issue from new york communities for change which is a wonderful community based group that works closely with

a lot of union sometimes they've been working with car wash workers and grocery store workers there across the city as well and they were talking to workers in fast food restaurants about other issues and found that they were just universally literally making minimum wage or a little bit above and we're again these are adults these are people with families i spoke to a woman pamela flood today who has three kids she works two jobs she works at burger king and she works at c.v.s. and she's putting herself through school and maintaining a four point zero g.p.a. at one and leading a strike today that's amazing you know for a long time america has kind of written off fast food industry jobs as you know basically to a transitional job it's an entry into the job market for sixteen year olds but the average age of my understanding is the average age of fast food workers in the united states is twenty eight and it's and it's going up isn't this a symptom of the d.m. dust realisation of america and of how c.e.o.'s are taking more and more leaving less and less for the workers in part as

a result of our strange tax code post reagan. salute lee well i mean this is you know these most of these workers are not making enough to you know these are the forty seven percent that mitt romney wants to warn us about that aren't paying any taxes. because they're making seven twenty five an hour you can't make any taxes on that but this is the deal just realisation of america this is this is the new normal this is the new industrial workforce right this is the service industry. they are jobs that just like you know the low skilled assembly line factory jobs they're not good jobs are bad jobs inherently they're bad jobs because they pay seven twenty five an hour because your manager gets to run your life because your schedule is irregular you maybe get thirty five hours a week if you're lucky but you don't know what your schedule is you can't work another job. there are lousy jobs because of the conditions and the only way to make them better jobs is for workers to do something like this to go out on strike to demand higher wages to demand better treatment to demand a union has the as the obama administration or any governmental agency stepped in

in defense of these folks you know it's really interesting hilda solis was in the secretary of labor was in staten island today speaking with day laborers and we were trying to get her attention to see if she would come down and talk to these workers she did not know this is connected to some battles in new york that are already taking place there is pressure on cuomo and democrats in the state assembly to raise the minimum wage for the state because i mean new york is expensive we being stuck at the ridiculously low already federal minimum wage is ridiculous there's also a fight in new york city right now over paid sick days which is being held up by the speaker of the city count of the city council christine quinn who wants to be mayor next year and who was loudly proclaiming her support for the for the fast food strikers today but she's what's standing between those fast food workers who are on strike today and paid vacations or paid sick days a long time to spend for a pamela flood to spend with her three kids one of the. surgery

a few thanks so much for being with us thanks for having me john. crazy alert the beach bogs of the undead much like vampires and werewolves zombies are a hot topic in pop culture right now and girls in bikinis have always been a hot topic so naturally showing off zombie girls in bikinis has to be a rep the recipe for success elise that was the thinking of a south african ad agency that has created a swimsuit calendar models dressed up to look like brain eating beauty in honor of the upcoming season of the hit show the walking dead calendar is getting some pretty rave reviews too including from south africa's f h men's magazine which said quote it pulls together two of every h m's favorite things bikini babes and zombies they just been holding a beer this video would have been three for three i wonder what's next at the

handsome vampire calendar for the late. romper once more are unsatisfied with this media empire in the u.k. and australia has several media holdings in the united states like the wall street journal of new york post fox news fox. and motion picture the whole thing rupert murdoch wants more he wants a media monopoly murdoch is currently jockeying to buy the los angeles times and the chicago tribune which just so happen to be the largest newspapers in the nation's second and third largest cities this will add to his current media empire in the united states which includes the most watched cable news network in the nation fox so-called news and the most circulated newspaper in the country the wall street journal standing in the way of full spectrum media domination in america our

federal communications commission rules that forbid one company from owning both a newspaper and a television station in one community. already owns local television stations in both chicago and los angeles according to sources within the f.c.c. chairman julius genachowski is quietly planning to scrap those rules under pressure from major media moguls like murdoch who see big box a huge political power and it consolidated national and local media genic house has circulated a new order to other f.c.c. commissioners that would allow for cross ownership of t.v. newspapers in the nation's twenty biggest media markets similar effort was made in two thousand and seven by george w. bush's f.c.c. but it was shot down after the senate vote voted to repeal it and a federal court blocked it not to mention ninety nine percent of the public comments the f.c.c. received opposed that media consolidation effort but undeterred murdoch and other

media moguls kept lobbying and now president obama's f.c.c. is expected to consider these rule changes again in december and of americans don't get involved in this issue and pressure the f.c.c. to say no that murdoch and his billionaire buddies will likely get what they want which is complete domination of our news media in fact has been big dickie and points out in his book the new media monopoly united states is already dangerously close to falling victim to being a complete media monopoly today only five corporations five one of which is rupert murdoch's news corp own the majority of all the media seen read or listened to by americans at the f.c.c. gets completely out of the way and further consolidation is going to fall which is a huge problem for democracy if there's one monopoly that's more dangerous than all of the others it's a media monopoly a democratic republic hinges on a well informed electorate and if one corporation or one eccentric billionaire owns

the means of information they can hijack the public debate and bend it toward their will for example consider what happened in italy remember silvio berlusconi he started. out is a cruise boat lounge singer in a small time hustler and he bought a newspaper then a small television station then a radio station then another t.v. station then another newspaper that another radio station then another t.v. station then another newspaper that a radio network but its even a network and suddenly berlusconi ended up owning about ninety five percent of all the media seen heard or read in italy and we control the information in italy perilous kone decided to run for prime minister and wouldn't know what he was on with an iron grip on the media barrels kone served as prime minister of italy for three separate terms totally nearly a decade despite the fact that he was accused of nearly every crime you can imagine by actual prosecutors including tax fraud false accounting corruption bribery perjury mafia collusion eighteen terrorist organizations and having sex with minors

that is infamous bunga bunga parties that's a crucial media monopoly is to political power and legal immunity from prosecution in the meantime berlusconi oversaw the downgrade of italy's press freedoms as documented by the organization freedom house which demoted italy's press from free like the rest of europe and the developed world to only partly free the main reason for that emotion was berlusconi's ability to completely manipulate the state media which or the his media corporate media which according to freedom house was a conflict of interest among the most blatant in the world only the technocrats or europe were able to eventually force berlusconi out of office last year. all about lee if the f.c.c. approves these rule changes and allows murdoch to gobble up more and more of our media then we could be facing our own silvio berlusconi situation rupert murdoch is widely considered

a kingmaker in the republican party and is even put prominent republican politicians on his payroll both before and after they've achieved electoral success most notably sarah pailin mike huckabee rick santorum newt gingrich and john casey with an enlarged media empire and maybe even a monopoly of the future murdoch will be able to hand pick politicians and use his massive conservative media complex to win elections silvio berlusconi's phony stuff that should scare the hell out of all of us and it should scare the hell out of president obama who has authority over the a c c unfortunately we can't depend on him to act so we have to do it ourselves go to free press dot net and join the campaign against murdoch's media power grab and that's the way it is tonight thursday november twenty ninth two thousand and twelve for more information check out our website to thom hartmann dot com free speech dot org or to dot com include a com slash big picture and don't forget democracy begins with you get out there

get active join something occupy something tag your it civil. more news today violence is once again fled the film these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. china operations are the day. the great russian warriors. prevailing over hazards and asperity.

to reenact an epic parade through paris. can they complete that triumph. with people's admiration for two hundred. zero zero. zero zero. zero zero .